Is it time to ditch the Doctor of Dental Surgery degree?
An interesting article titled “Why 2 dental degrees?: Time for unification of degrees and oral health care providers” written by Donald B. Giddon and William V. Giannobile appears in the March 21, 2023 Journal of the American Dental Association. The article calls into question why dentistry is the only major health care profession that has two equivalent degrees: the Doctor of Medicine in Dentistry (DMD) degree and the Doctor of Dental Surgery (DDS) degree. In the article discussion is made of how there is no useful purpose to have two different degrees in dentistry. The authors state that this causes confusion among patients, dentists, and other health care professionals. The authors believe that dentistry should have a single degree, the doctor of dental medicine, which is more accurate to what occurs in dentistry today. The authors say that there are no … Read more